TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 11460, 19 December 1902, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Professor Wall's remark The upon "Going to the "Young Idea" Wars," and "To Anthca," on Love. thai the small High School boy could hardly be expected to understand or appreciate 17th century amorous verse, rather curiously compares with his verdict on "Macbeth,"' as less comprehensible to school boys than the amorous vicissitudes of "Esmond." But as regards the understanding of love lyrics, an American public school teneher lately made an amuring experiment, by reading to a large class of boys and girls Browning's "Meeting at Night," and' n.«king them to write their opinions of the subject and its treatment. It is satisfactory to observe that, at any rate, the young students were nob bore 3. "The poem doca not pjxo enough time to the subject," one complains, and nnother, who thinks "this little poem I is nice because it trlls the nice route of the lover," declares it "would be muoh more beautiful if it was longer, and contained I many mow interesting facts-" '"It- starts too quickly, and tells nothing of where, he ■was, or how hi came to be in the book; and he fk:ppcd from the ocean to ths jncon and then buck to the water," write* a critic evidently troubled by Browning's pictorial effects. But the human interest wins ahnojfe invariable approval for tho second vsrs;: —• "Thtn a mile of sea-scented beach ; Three fields to cress till a farm appears; A tap at the pane, the quick hlrup scrakh And b ue sr.urt of a. lighted matnh, And a voice lens loud, tliiouch joys and fvaw, Then two hearts beating eaah to ench! "I think it is pretty good, because it is taken f*cm life, and when a man goes horn? he always kisses hh wife," says one acute observer. "I thick it. Ie the description of a lover Roing to «c his sweetheart." comaicnts im incipient hero. "But I bolieve it would be batter if his .sweetheart had had the light burning previous to his arrival." The match'and tho tr.p at the window especially please the children. "Ha taps at the "window to let his wife or friend know that it ie no stranger, or nobody that will hurt h-pr," wo are to d; and again, "U shows how scared a woman gets, because when sho heard him she cou'd hardly talk between joy and fear." Boys usually hold the wife theory; the husband describee his return from a voyage or from work, ar.d "I think it is good b?causs it tells the hard time a man may have in coming home rometimes." Girls take it more often as "a good description from beginning to cud of a lover's course to hi« most beloved." But one, less poetica/., concludes primly, "As I am not interested in love, and know but very little about it, I can give no further explanation in regard to it." And another, still more of Professor Wall's opinion, thus rebukes her questioner, "I think it has very good descriptions, but I don't fancy [ eentimenUl things, and that clo&ee in that wayl" To attempt anything The Great like an exhaustive hisSmitih Family, tory of all the Smiths in the world would be en impossible task, but. Mr Compton Reade has succeeded in producing a good general review of what he terms 'the great Fabrician family, whether crisped into Snwfch, emoothed into Smyth, or smidged into Smijth." The Smiths, as we all know, are a numerous family; they ere bo numerous that Mr Reade marvels that the name of England has not ere now been changed to "Smithland." And they are a family of considerable antiquity. According to Professor Mahaffy, a man, named Smith lived in the days of. Ptolemy 111., B.C. 227. After thie discovery the aristocrats whose ancestors "came over with the Conqueror' , may hide their diminished heads! The ancient Smiths, moreover, were persons of importance. "The Smith that forgeth at the fire," the worker to whom the family owes its name, held a position of high honour in early timee. Mr Holt_ White points out that "David was armourer to King Saul. Vulcan was a person of distinction In Olympus. In the days of Thor, when none but the mightiest oould wield the hammer, the Smith was a cynosure; in the heroic daye of gallant little "Wales he sat at the right hand of the KJng." In Norman times the Smith had become a meie mechanic, but as the goldsmith of Queen Anntfs days he roee in the social scale, and founded the great industry of banking. The Smiths have always been a practical family, cays Mr Reade. There are among "these descendants ot primitive iron workers" scarcely any poets or idealists, but an army of lawyers, soldiers, Bailors, and men of affairs. Mr Reade combats the notion that Smyth, Smythe, and Smijfch are variants of Smith adopted to give an aristocratic flavour to a homely name. "Nothing," he says, "can be further from the truth. The original form wae Smyth, just as the modern 'cider , ie a corruption of the ancient 'cyder.' So far the Smyths having Smyt&fid themselves, I can discover barely one notable instance of the change from \i' to 'y,' but I can trace numberless instances of Elizabethan Smyths having become Victorian Smiths. The rococo spelling of the word 1 Smijtih. is apparently duo to the ingeniousness of some mediaeval clerk who in writing Smyth took upon, himself to dob both poorts of the 'y,' thus producing 'Smijth.'" Perhaps it is because they are so numerous that the Smiths never hold a i«ort of family reunion nowadays, but there is a record of one Smith banquet being held in the eighteenth century. The president was one Captain Smith, Governor of Virginia; Mie gueete were Smiths to a man; the cooks and the waiters were all Smiths. A Rev. Smith* said grace, and a ipoefc Smith recited an ode composed by him in honour of the feast, and subsequently published by yet another Smith. Nowadays, apparently, the Smiths are not » clannish. Yet t/here should be great possibilities in the idea of a freemasonry embracing all descendants of the houee of Smith. Since the beginning of NoDissatisfied vember thousands of volunVoluntcen. teers in England have pent in their resignations, as a protest against the new regulations which came into force on the Ist ult. No fewer than 5000 resigned on November Ist, and up till the time the last mail left England each day brought a fresh crop of resignations. Naturally the end of the war and the subsidence of the spasmodic outburst of military entbuei&mn, led many volunteers to withdraw ; but after making every allowance on this score, the number of resignations is so great that there can be no doubt about the existence of a strong spirit of discontent throughout the volunteer force. The official statistics tell their own tale. The Victoria and St. George's Rifles, which on November Ist numbered 863 men, has been reduced by withdrawals to 135; the Queen's Westminsters have shrunk from 1675 men to 261; the Inns of Court from 630 to 101; the London Scot-

ti.«h from 959 to 148; and so on. The large majority of the withdrawals have been made by volunteers who joined prior to the war, mam- of them being very old members. The root of the whole trouble appears to be the regulation making it compulsory for the volunteers to go into camp for six days in August of each year. According to the "Daily Mail," it is not the duration of the camps which has caused the discontent, but the fact that they are fixed for August, which is the holiday month, and therefore the only chance open to many volunteers to enjoy themselves as civilians. To meet the difficulty it has been suggested that standing camps should be formed in the various centres, to which the volunteer might repair for his week's training at any period of the summer which suited him best. It is evident that the War Office will have to unbend a little if the dissatisfaction is to be removed and the wholesale resignations j checked.